JCBs and Chemicals Are Threatening Termites, the Hidden Engineers of Delhi Ridge |
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Once upon a time it was – and perhaps still is – commonplace to regard termites as ‘pests’ to be destroyed. It’s true, of course, that termites cause serious damage by chewing into wood, books, even electrical wires. Termites are built to go after anything made from cellulose: dead plants, leaf litter, dried grass stems, bark – they are all food for them. Foresters in India blame them for killing trees and young saplings and have routinely used deadly chemicals to destroy them when they are planting up a site.
Can you blame termites for not being able to tell the difference between a dead tree in the forest and the (dead) wooden planks of your bookshelf or chaukhat?
Termites rebuild a broken mound on the Central Ridge, Delhi, May 2026. Photo: Pradip Krishen.
Our understanding of the role that termites play in natural environments has now been turned inside out. Termites are not interested in living tissue, so blaming them for killing saplings is not justified. Far from regarding them as pests to be destroyed, termites are now recognised to be a key part of functioning ecosystems.
Their presence increases the robustness of dryland ecosystems, influencing the distribution and retention of moisture and nutrients which, in turn, affects microbial, plant and animal diversity and resilience.
We ought to be protecting and supporting termites and their activities, instead of trying to exterminate them. You can’t avoid spotting termite mounds when you walk on the Ridge in Delhi. They’re usually quite small, with two or three ‘turrets’, typically about half a metre high. Their building materials are simple: tiny pellets of soil mixed with their own dung and compacted by saliva.
A Near-Miss for the Ridge
In April, Delhi’s Forest Department issued a tender for carrying out ‘anti-termite treatment’ on the Ridge for a plantation project. The tender specified using an organophosphate called Chlorpyrifos and a banned chemical called Lindane, which together would have destroyed not just........